In The City Of Dr.Who by Gillian Brightmore
West Coast Eisteddfod Short Story Competition 2014
Leaving his boyhood city ,later becoming famous as the location for Dr.Who ,
he was never to return there , anymore.
His mother the first victim of his re – invention, and was relegated firmly to
the past . She alone knew of the scrawny boy at seventeen with a crooked smile ,
and angry drug - crazed eyes hooked on dope to deal with his complicated ego.
Working as a tabloid journalist he might cruelly expose the shortcomings
of celebrities his own issues were never to be mentioned, but were kept hidden
- under lock and key. He of course remembered his mother had once called him,
“ a natural born liar.” If it was so he’d certainly put it to good use in his trade;
and trait inherited from his father , a man of constantly shifting identities .
Moving in with Juno he related this edited version of the past that became de
rigour - his hard - done - by childhood , the dominating mother and later an
absentee father , but all the while putting the best spin possible on his own
bullying. Yet a sense of dislocation overwhelmed him fuelling his anger on the
pretext of the trauma of his parents divorce, now years ago.
As his mother’s cherished, and only child being an adult he thought it
expedient to deny all knowledge of her devotion , giving himself the best press
he could in the eyes of his partner, the ever watchful Juno.
From a cultural different from his own in Wales he adopted the values of her
extended family abandoning his own allowing her the full monopoly
of his emotional life ; even his cats were abandoned to comply with her lifestyle.
He was careful to detach his mother more gradually over time until she was
estranged, the woman of his own blood: his mother.
He felt no remorse .It did it seem like matricide in a disposable society where the
culture was every man for himself; his father had taught him that. She hardly saw
the cracks in his psyche as besides cultural differences she was only desperate to
become pregnant , her biological clock ticking fast having acquired a suitable
donor ,and good provider she wasted no time exploring inconsistencies in her
mate her only concerned with breeding.
In due course his mother’s sexuality of course became the stick to beat her with
being too unconventional a life choice for Juno’s family tradition to have
taken on board : the boy – man respected that even if betraying his mother was
the price paid. Besides his mother, being the paid - up feminist could never
kept her mouth shut ,or her opinion of his career among the, ‘gutter
press,’ as she called it that he worked for , one that objectified women and
used their bodies to sell newsprint she claimed from her moral high ground.
The publications he worked for where women were used to sell copy,
the Lad’s Mags , ” all tits and football “, said with his crafty smirk. Besides, he
argued the girls were well - paid and it was their choice after all enjoying the five
minutes of notoriety showing off their considerable assets. Of course he saw why
his mother didn’t like to see her own sex trussed up like so much meat, but he
reasoned it sold hard copy paying his considerable wage used to support a lavish
lifestyle for his adopted family.
He dismissed his mother if she was ever mentioned as a typical Daily Mail reader
although it was The Guardian ,or The Pink Paper she read as well as being active in
local politics once even describing her as ,’mental’. Himself a Sun man ; only for
he football pages of course he always said .
His mother kept all the memorabilia of his childhood as though she was trying
to ward off the devil along with the cherished memorabilia of what it had been
to be a mother. He kept his childhood memories in a box marked - ‘Shut’.
Her views were all over the internet , the seventies activist she knew how to
make her voice heard. it annoyed him as he liked to think of cyberspace as his
personal domain, but then she had never been able to keep her mouth shut , had
she ?
Fuck it he thought, in the 1980’s everyone under thirty were off their faces, the
Rave Scene at it’s peak .He had sucked the apple to the core. In his youth he
had dreamed of being a pool player as famous as Jimmy White was in the eighties
or later an actor like James Dean : his icon. The man who had been a boy became
a football fanatic , but never supporting his home team – the Blue Birds thinking
it more cool to be supporter of Man United. What if he had ended up a hack
writer in his forties ; he ‘d blame that on his childhood too.
Juno grumbled about the debts he had accumulated, from what he called
his, ‘hedonistic’ period controlling his finances as tightly as she did his
emotional life ,making sure everything he spent was on her and her child.
Rootless until his late twenties he then seduced by life in the margins of the
metropolis considering himself to be a true cosmopolitan leaving his native land
far behind , but in reality living in a grimy north orbital London miles from
the nearest Tube in a congested area far from any green space but where he
called , ‘home’.
He told himself he was no longer the boy from a small town near the sea where
there had been a magic in the air , but where she was still living , his mother; the
keeper of his secrets .The city he had grown up in , where he had first learned to
tie up his shoe laces ,where once his grand - father had told him was a great sea
port it’s wide canals running from the high valleys down through the city to the
sea exporting the finest anthracite world wide ; in it’s heyday his grandfather had
said dreamed it was New York.
But then he remembered how mother had taken the wind out of sails when she
had got rid of his father leaving him, not for another man ,but a woman then
bringing him up alone. Yet it was his father who had off - loaded him when he was
only twelve then moving as far away as he could with a Welsh - speaking matron ,
learning the Welsh language , although a Yorkshire man to live with her
among the mountains in the north abandoning his son. This is what had
unhinged her son his mother claimed . In his turn the boy learned later how to
change his identity depending who and where he was at times so successfully he
believed in the fiction of himself he had created.
His mother had always had to take the brunt of his twisted sense of angst as she
was an easier target than his father with her built- in sense of guilt, being a
mother and no adult to protect her making full use of his control.
He enjoyed bullying ; it made him feel he was ,’a man’. She thought it ironic being
a feminist had produced a narcissist an emotional bully for a son, but never
said so; to his face at least for fear of reprisals.
When his own relationship had begun to disintegrate after a second child was
born sometimes then he thought of returning to his home town hating it and
loving it at the same ,but this made him feel schizoid so he did not go.
Even if he had become a successful Red - Top journalist earning a five - figure
salary he needed to keep his eye on the ball to survive in the dog-eat-dog
profession keeping ahead of the herd ,and telling all those, ‘little white lies’ ; so
be it .
He knew his mother was older alone now with no close family left in his
forgotten city with only her cat to keep her company , but he punished her with
his continued silences. His mother became like someone condemned , but who
did not know what crime she had committed or how long her sentence was. She
had no choice she felt ,but to accept their estrangement , and knowing it was
gloated over by her ex - husband.
The boy had behaved in the same way he had his grandmother ,who had loved
him utterly and not dying in her ninety - fourth year .His mother had cared for her
alone, yet he, her grandson had never found the time to visit her or even send as
much as a birthday card , though his mother begged him to, until it was too late.
His Nana had died one day in late August unable to wait any longer for his return .
He would not even return later to take her ashes to he birthplace in Llantrisant
with his mother.
He could justify his behaviour : as a working journalist with tight
deadlines to meet working a sixty hour week , besides being a bastard was
part of the business so when all was said and done suited his ladish image.
By now his mother knew by now that leopards rarely changed their spots. She no
longer called him ,’ boy’. Always rationalising his lack of empathy he told himself
his mother would have to cope as best she could in her later years .He was not
to be undermined by out - of date- sentiments, let alone a sense of duty; not
letting let her rain on his parade .It was what women did after all - care for others
their own lives becoming redundant even sacrificing their own creativity for the
next generation even if it was the fucking twenty – first century.
His father had of course hated his mother after she left him for a woman, rather
than a man. Trust her to go off with a woman ; a real kick in the
teeth for his father’s masculinity.He might have coped better had it been a
man ,but as it was he’d lost face among colleagues , but that this should have
happened in Wales made him a laughing stock. He had counted it by
having a vasectomy in some pathetic attempt at revenge.
That’s what annoyed him most about always having her astute opinions, and
that high - minded bullshit. Besides where had all that seventies psycho
babble got her ? After all she was some unknown writer out in ‘the sticks’ with her
writing not even paying the bills, but you had to give her credit though as she’d
always known how to wing it living on next to nothing as a freelance. Hard ball..
Maybe the day would come when he might re-visit his past making a
‘return journey’ , like that other Welshman Dylan Thomas returning to Swansea,
his ”ugly, lovely town “ to look for the lost boy he had once been .It could make
him cry if he thought about it too much ; so he didn’t.
Sometimes memories surged back to the places he first remembered, like
running down the Victorian Arcades with his mother and grand mother ;
complete in hat, gloves and hand bag as big as a dispatch box shopping at the
family-owned , David Morgan‘s Department Store shopping for his Christmas
presents ,or as a teenager buying L.Ps upstairs in Cardiff Market where on a
rugby match Saturday the Welsh singing could be heard , Bread of Heaven
reaching crescendo every time a Welsh, ‘ Try’ was scored echoing through the city
streets like a rumbling torrent.
Nothing would ever again be quite as ‘pure’ again as those first early memories.
Once he’d started smoking dope his memory of these became tarnished ,
falling away like snow melting. Afterwards he’d had shit for luck with his
father ignoring him like that and the lights going out on his childhood even
the memories of the shoreline of the western coast and the benediction of the
sea where he had spent his boyhood holidays , golden in his memory his mother
loved so well now became erased.
Of course that’s what he blamed her most for, his mother, destroying his
childhood dream for the reality of the adult world: they all did that: parents.
Later leaving university for London ,his degree unfinished he became a DJ
playing with two thousand punters vibrating to his music out of their
skulls ,the adrenalin cascading over him like electricity , and was hooked
on Ecstasy for years after dropping out of college. .
Worst of all for his mother that he prevaricated never taking his daughter to see
his mother although he could tell she loved his daughter the few times she had
been, ‘ allowed’ to visit. Serve her right he thought: let her suffer as he
had done when his father had left .It was, ’ pay back ‘ time. Yet he felt as
dysfunctional as any character in a Tarantino movie as nothing would ever again
be so significant as those early years in his forgotten city ,but never he was never
admitting that, least of all to himself.
His partner had never liked his mother since learning of her sexuality .He never
again spent Christmas with her, or sent birthday cards advised by his partner
that would be, ‘hypocritical’. By way of explanation he told his friends that his
mother was, ‘ mental’, so her amputation was complete.
Sabotaging his own flesh and blood went with the territory he told himself
off - loading his mother n. At times his mother did wonder whether she might
have done the wrong thing ,but for the right reason and would now have to face
the shivers of her mortality alone , without the comfort of close family .
When Juno announced that she was leaving him to return to her own
culture he realized too late she had merely wanted a suitable Caucasian to father
her children ; he was now redundant .She claimed every penny of
maintenance she could together with a giant part of the shared house.
Now pushing forty and no longer, ‘ a lad’ he faced redundancy .He thought
of contacting his mother thinking she might be good for a few grand , or that
she could re-mortgage her home as he had his eye on a pad in Crystal Palace .
She owed him that, to see him settled after all he’d been through - didn’t she?
However the tables had turned his mother having published a novel ,
years in the writing , but considered cult , ‘an over - night success ‘ : the media
loving it. At the same time she had also begun a new relationship, and so was
taken up with her younger lover : it was her turn now to ignore him.
She grieved never having seen her grand daughter grow up , or to have taken
her to Cawalladers for ice cream sundaes , or to see her run onto the surf on the
sunlit beaches of the west where she had taken her son where he had run, leaping
into the Blue Lagoon at Abereiddy. She must not think of it .She would unravel
if she did so.
As his life changed he learned the meaning of betrayal.He remembered his
grandfather saying ,when the boy still wore short trousers, that the world was
dark - full of tigers, and once you lose what you love the most , but that’s how the
light gets in . *
* “ There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in…’
Leonard Cohen
@ G.K.BRIGHTMORE
05.08.2014
2, 640 wds.
updated by @gillian-brightmore: 02/13/16 01:30:37AM
